Found 91 article(s) for author 'Edward Glaeser'

The Spatial Mismatch Between Innovation and Joblessness. Edward Glaeser, April 9, 2019, Paper, “American technological creativity is geographically concentrated in areas that are generally distant from the country’s most persistent pockets of joblessness. Should innovation policy attempt to engender more innovation is distressed areas? The primarily inventive parts of innovation policy, such as N.I.H. grants, can aid underperforming areas, possibly through health improvements that reduce the share of people on Disability Insurance, without any spatial reallocation. Moreover, since research funding is presumably already designed to maximize knowledge production, spatial reallocation may come at a considerable cost. The educational aspects of innovation policy, such as Pell Grants, work-study and Federal overhead reimbursement on grants, can reflect regional realities better and do more to encourage employment in distressed areas. Lifting the cap on H1B visas in poorer places can also enhance local human capital. Finally, there is particular scope for geographically targeted entrepreneurship policy, such as eliminating the barriers to new business formation near universities and in distressed places. Spatially targeted employment subsidies can also encourage more labor-intensive innovation in depressed areas.” Link

Human-Capital Externalities in China. Edward Glaeser, August 2018, Paper, “This paper provides evidences of heterogeneous human-capital externality using CHIP 2002, 2007 and 2013 data from urban China. After instrumenting city-level education using the number of relocated university departments across cities in the 1950s, one year more city-level education increases individual hourly wage by 22.0 percent, more than twice the OLS estimate. Human-capital externality is found to be greater for all groups of urban residents in the instrumental variable estimation.” Link

Measuring Gentrification: Using Yelp Data to Quantify Neighborhood Change. Edward Glaeser, August 2018, Paper, “We demonstrate that data from digital platforms such as Yelp have the potential to improve our understanding of gentrification, both by providing data in close to real time (i.e. nowcasting and forecasting) and by providing additional context about how the local economy is changing. Combining Yelp and Census data, we find that gentrification, as measured by changes in the educational, age, and racial composition within a ZIP code, is strongly associated with increases in the numbers of grocery stores, cafes, restaurants, and bars, with little evidence of crowd-out of other categories of businesses. We also find that changes in the local business landscape is a leading indicator of housing price changes, and that the entry of Starbucks (and coffee shops more generally) into a neighborhood predicts gentrification. Each additional Starbucks that enters a zip code is associated with a 0.5% increase in housing prices.” Link

The Role of Industry, Occupation, and Location-Specific Knowledge in the Survival of New Firms. Edward Glaeser, July 2018, Paper, “How do regions acquire the knowledge they need to diversify their economic activities? How does the migration of workers among firms and industries contribute to the diffusion of that knowledge? Here we measure the industry, occupation, and location specific knowledge carried by workers from one establishment to the next using a dataset summarizing the individual work history for an entire country. We study pioneer firms-firms operating in an industry that was not present in a region-because the success of pioneers is the basic unit of regional economic diversification. We find that the growth and survival of pioneers increase significantly when their first hires are workers with experience in a related industry, and with work experience in the same location, but not with past experience in a related occupation.” Link

Ed Glaeser on the Future of Employment, Inequality, Poverty, and Joblessness in America July 2018. GrowthPolicy’s Devjani Roy interviewed Ed Glaeser, the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard University, on the future of employment, inequality, poverty, and joblessness in America. | Click here for more interviews like this one. Links: Ed Glaeser’s […]

The role of industry-speciﬁc, occupation-speciﬁc, and location-speciﬁc knowledge in the growth and survival of new ﬁrms. Edward Glaeser, June 23, 2018, Paper, “How do regions acquire the knowledge they need to diversify their economic activities? How does the migration of workers among ﬁrms and industries contribute to the diffusion of that knowledge? Here we measure the industry-, occupation-, and location-speciﬁc knowledge carried by workers from one establishment to the next, using a dataset summarizing the individual work history for an entire country. We study pioneer ﬁrms—ﬁrms operating in an industry that was not present in a region— because the success of pioneers is the basic unit of regional economic diversiﬁcation.” Link

How Companies Can Use the Data They Collect to Further the Public Good. Edward Glaeser, Michael Luca, May 16, 2018, Paper, “By the end of 2017, Yelp had amassed more than 140 million reviews of local businesses. While the company’s mission focuses on helping people find local businesses more easily, this wealth of data has the potential to serve other purposes. For instance, Yelp data might help restaurants understand which markets they should consider entering, or whether to add a bar. It can help real estate investors understand where gentrification might occur. And it might help private equity firms with an interest in coffee decide whether to invest in Philz or Blue Bottle.” Link

Saving the heartland: Place-based policies in 21st Century America. Edward Glaeser, Lawrence Summers, March 8, 2018, Paper, “America’s regional disparities are large and regional convergence has declined if not disappeared. This wildly uneven economic landscape calls for a new look at spatially targeted policies. There are three plausible justifications for place-based policies–agglomeration economies, spatial equity and larger marginal returns to targeting social distress in high distress areas. The second justification is stronger than the first and the third justification is stronger than the second. The enormous social costs of non-employment suggests that fighting long-term joblessness is more important than fighting income inequality. Stronger tools, such as spatially targeted employment credits, may be needed in West Virginia than in San Francisco.” Link

Urban transformations and the future of cities. Edward Glaeser, 2017, Book Chapter, “In the last few decades, many global cities and towns have experienced unprecedented economic, social, and spatial structural change. Today, we find ourselves at the juncture between entering a post-urban and a post-political world, both presenting new challenges to our metropolitan regions, municipalities, and cities. Many megacities, declining regions and towns are experiencing an increase in the number of complex problems regarding internal relationships, governance, and external connections. In particular, a growing disparity exists between citizens that are socially excluded within declining physical and economic realms and those situated in thriving geographic areas. This book conveys how forces of structural change shape the urban landscape.” Link

Nowcasting the Local Economy: Using Yelp Data to Measure Economic Activity at Scale. Edward Glaeser, Michael Luca, 2017, Paper, “Can new data sources from online platforms help to measure local economic activity at scale? Government datasets from agencies such as the U.S. Census Bureau have long been the gold standard for measuring economic activity at the local level. However, these statistics typically appear only after multi-year lags, and the public-facing versions are aggregated to the county or ZIP code level. In contrast, crowdsourced data from online platforms such as Yelp are often contemporaneous and geographically finer than official government statistics. In this paper, we present evidence that Yelp data can complement government surveys by measuring economic activity in close to real time, at a granular level.” Link

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